Law in the age of Trump is focus of free UH lectures

Associate Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, Supreme Court of Canada

The public is invited to a series of discussions by national legal experts who will explore a multitude of legal issues in the “era of Trump,” including how one can be an ethical lawyer.

The free lectures on Friday, January 10 culminate the January-Term (J-Term) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law, a week in which law students are offered free specialized one-credit courses taught by some of the world’s leading scholars, professors and judges. Students have often said that J-Term is one of the outstanding features of the UH law school.

Included in the line-up of experts for 2020, is Associate Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada, who will talk about “Protecting Rights in a Polarized World: The Canadian Experience.” This is Justice Abella’s second visit to the law school; in 2014, she impressed the legal community as a guest of the International Jurist in Residence Program, which regularly brings leading international judges to Hawai‘i to lecture and teach.

Other J-Term faculty members include professors at Harvard, Yale, Boston College and a leading practitioner in the realm of Native American law.

Law Dean Avi Soifer said, “Our J-Term consistently is a wonderful bonus for our students, as well as a chance to impress national and international legal experts with our students and faculty and with the spirit of our law school and the Hawaiʻi legal community.”

The public lecture 2020 J-Term schedule:

• 9-11:15 a.m. in CR2 – “Rights of American Indian Tribes in the Age of Trump,” by Professor Stephen Pevar, a staff attorney for the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union, who has written extensively on the subject of Indian and tribal rights.
   

• 9-11:15 a.m. in CR1 – “Protecting Rights in a Polarized World; The Canadian Experience,” by Associate Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada. She has written about and lectured extensively on employment equity, developing the theories of “equality” and “discrimination” adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada.
   

• 2:45-5 p.m. in CR2 – “The Ethical Lawyer in the Trump Era: Partisan Advocate, Moral Actor, Trustee of Justice?” by Stephen Wizner, who is the William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law Emeritus at Yale Law School and has been on the Yale faculty since 1970. Among his many professional experiences, he spent four years as a legal services lawyer for the poor in New York City as a staff attorney at the Columbia Law School Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law.
   

• 5:30-7 p.m. in CR2 – “Criminal Jurisprudence of the Roberts Court,” by Harvard Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo, whose teaching focuses on the institutional design and administration of the American penal system, with particular attention to the administrative role courts play in regulating law enforcement behavior.
   

• 5:30-7 p.m. in CR1 – “Start-Up Company Governance: Taming Unicorns,” by Professor of Law Renee M. Jones, who is also Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Boston College Law School, where she teaches and writes in the areas of corporate and securities law. Her recent article, The Unicorn Governance Trap, highlights the risks posed by the increasing number of unicorns (private companies valued at $1 billion or more) to investors, employees, consumers and society.

The late Frank Boas, a generous supporter of the law school, was one of the early sponsors of J-Term, beginning in 2005, and in his memory the law school continues to sponsor a visiting Harvard Law School professor each year. Many of the other J-Term professors are supported by the Wallace S. Fujiyama Distinguished Visiting Professor and the Galiher Ono Lecture Funds.

Visit the UH law school website for more information.

For more information, visit: https://www.law.hawaii.edu/article/law-age-trump-focus-free-public-lectures